National Location Code

NLCs were introduced as a method of accounting for and attributing costs and revenue to railway assets.

This quotation is taken from the 14th Edition (January 1987) of the National Location Code listing book, published by the British Railways Board: "With the widespread use of computers within British Railways and the advent of national computer systems for dealing with payroll compilation, stores recording and accounting, wagon control, traffic data, revenue and expenditure accounting, market and traffic surveys etc., the need for a standard location code became increasingly important.

In order to meet this need, the Regions were asked in November 1966 to revise and update the publication then known as the Terminals and Mileage Gazetteer Code.

At the same time the opportunity was taken to include all sidings, yards, depots, offices, administrative centres, etc., where there is 'railway' activity.

The machine printed the codes of the "origin" and "destination" stations on the top line of the ticket.

After the railway network was privatised in the mid-1990s, there was a need for additional NLCs to be created: In 1998, Brighton was supplied with two wall-mounted touch-screen machines by Cubic Transportation Systems, Inc., issuing a limited range of tickets by credit card only; code 8882 was given to these.

Some examples are: When British Railways was created in 1948, it was split into six operating regions; these became five in the 1960s (Eastern, London Midland, Western, Southern and Scottish).